TOMS RIVER — The start of a new school year poses a fiscal challenge every summer for Sara Ortega.

But the mother of six said this year is even more difficult because her family lost everything when Hurricane Sandy flooded the home they rented on Kettle Creek Road in Toms River with three feet of water. The only things saved were some clothes and blankets that they took to a shelter.

“We have to buy all the stuff that we lost and plus stuff for the kids,” Ortega, a 29-year-old Toms River resident who works overnights at a nursing home, said last week.

She’s not alone.

For many families, the Oct. 29 storm is exacerbating an already difficult financial time: back-to-school shopping season. So the Hazlet-based RAINE Foundation, a nonprofit group dedicated to helping children and families in crisis, has undertaken a massive effort called Operation School Supply to furnish 20,000 students with the resources they’ll need this fall and to help ease the burden of cash-strapped guardians.

“They’re spending money elsewhere, where they wouldn’t normally. They are buying appliances they wouldn’t have had to replace. They’re redoing their basement that was devastated,” said Mike Fabozzi, president of the RAINE — Reaching All in Need Everyday — Foundation. “Damages that weren't expected, they have to deal with, and it’s tight for most.”

So this year the RAINE Foundation, which primarily focuses on the Bayshore communities in Monmouth County, expanded its regular end-of-the-summer school drive to reach students in devastated communities from Staten Island to Long Beach Island.

The foundation has provided school supplies for students in the Midland Beach section of Staten Island, Union Beach, Keansburg, Highlands, Manasquan and Point Pleasant, as well as other Jersey Shore towns.

On Wednesday, Fabozzi and volunteers with the foundation carted in boxes of supplies for the roughly 150 students preparing to return to the Hugh J. Boyd Elementary School in Seaside Heights this week for the first time since Sandy flooded the building. Earlier last week, the foundation had more than 30 teacher chairs delivered to the building.

“Everything you ask for is not only fulfilled, but it’s brand new and it’s beautiful,” said Tiffany Aroneo, a special education teacher who worked with the foundation to get the school the supplies it needed.

Nearby, volunteers stacked notebooks, markers, three-ring binders, colored pencils and other school supplies on tables inside The People’s Pantry, a disaster relief center in Toms River. Book bags and lunch boxes overflowed from shopping carts before families like Ortega and her children — who range in age from 1 to 12 years old — started filing into the building on Fischer Boulevard to stock up for the upcoming school year.

“At this point in time economically, this area has been slammed, and even if you haven't suffered damage from Sandy you are feeling the impact,” said Patricia Donaghue, the executive director of the pantry. She said for many, it means a lot to “have anything at this point to try to help offset the cost of back to school. It’s a wonderful thing.”

Families with school-age children are expected to spend on average nearly $635 on clothing, supplies and electronics this year, according to the National Retail Federation. Though that’s less than what families spent in 2012, community members say the lingering effects of Sandy amplify the struggle.

Tammi Millar, the director of communications for the Toms River Regional Schools, said many families in the district are still displaced from their homes.

“It’s possible they are paying a mortgage and paying rent also,” she said. “These particular problems definitely create a strain on families budgets.”

Fabozzi said his group hopes to ease that burden in every community hit hard by the storm..

In Seaside Heights, as fifth grade teacher Pat McGinn surveyed the boxes of supplies stacked in the school, she said, “This is just perfect for the beginning of the school year.”

She called the donation tremendous, “especially for these children, that they have something that’s brand spanking new for them.”